nd
crowded between them in a cosey, confidential manner.

"Say, the old fellow is getting smoothed down," he chuckled. "That
address was milk for babes. He's got good sense. The thin edge of that
plurality made him think twice. I reckon he's going to play a safe game
after this. I don't know what he wanted to throw such a scare into us
early in the game for! But as we get old we get cranky, I suppose. I may
be that way myself when I grow older."

"Vard preached the theory to us for all it was worth," commented the
Duke, "but I reckon he's up against the practice end of the proposition
now--and he was a politician before he was a preacher."

"Hope he'll stay a politician after this. He got onto my nerves. It
wasn't necessary to be so almighty emphatic about things going wrong in
this State."

"Old Pinkney up our way is always careful to keep an eye out for the
drovers," said the Duke. "When he sees one coming he hustles out into
the pasture and shifts the poker off'n the breachy critter onto the best
one in the bunch. And that's the way he unloads the breachy one. Vard
has been wearing the poker the last few weeks, but I don't believe he
intends to hook down any fences."

In the eyes of the politicians, therefore, Governor Waymouth had become
safe and sane. They construed his earlier declarations as the ambitions
of an old man dreaming a dream of perfection. The legislature swung into
the routine of its first weeks in the usual fashion. The business
consisted of the presentation of bills, acts, and resolves. The daily
sessions lasted barely half an hour. The committee hearings had not
begun, and the legislators found time hanging heavy on their hands.

Harlan Thornton continued to be a frequent caller at the Presson home.
But he did not seem to find an opportunity for a tete-a-tete with
Madeleine. She did not show constraint in his presence. She did not
avoid him. She treated him with the same frank familiarity. But he did
not find himself alone with her. He did not try to force such a
situation, in spite of the provocation she had given him once. He was
not yet sure that he could command the words that real love might demand
for expression. That was his vague excuse to his own heart for
delaying--for his heart insisted that he did love her. He had to admit
to himself that this was not the headlong passion the poets described,
but he consoled himself with the reflection that he was not a poet. So
he made the most